Bianca Stone
Recreation
I was saved by my own curiosity at the shattered states of Man.
It takes a long time. The body adjusts. I blame no one.
I figure this is the way one grows up, finally, by
going to see what everyone is doing downstairs.
The sounds of people living coaxes me
out of storage. No one is coming back
in that same way they came in the first place,
to tell you
their desire is your desire. To tell you
you’re not really here.
But I am here. I look out at the green
of my yard and the slightly darker green
dimensions of forest, layers of greens, and black,
and inside the ceaseless subject of birds continues,
questioning one another in music and some seeds
blowing around in the air, indistinguishable from insects,
inspired only by wind, sunlight and water,
and subject to nothing else.
Angels, it’s said, are oddly ignorant and lack senses,
memory and genitals. Yet, they make a song so long and eternal
no other creature could ever hope to sing it. Knowing
and not knowing, and what it does: silence. Words. Another life.
Mother’s Day
What About Being A Totally Lovely Person?
Wittgenstein & Imagination
Stuck here, on this earth with an anxious heartbeat like
a mauled bird trying to get off the ground, already dead, but still
under the influence of instinct until the final, final moment—
Wittgenstein was a man under constant intellectual pressure
from himself. Whose high-strung, piano virtuoso brothers
all committed suicide, respectively—
now, be so kind as to stand very still in the corner of the kitchen
imagining actually being happy. I mean
not in theory (you’re so good at that) but really imagine it, so that we
might grieve what is inadequate in language together—
No one loves me is not a statement anyone will love, though
I am holding it right now for you, like someone in an airport.
Standing in front of a spear moving towards your head,
I wish to take it on, a
spiritual casting; I wish to give you things, gifts, not
preparing to take something back from you, later, but
an offering—
I felt sort of horrified
by Wittgenstein’s unwavering pathological insistence
on moral code—disappearing into a remote island
to spend day and night thinking;
how he tortured himself into beautiful abstract thoughts
about the letter “A” only a few people in existence could ever parse out—
and to whom does it matter now—
I am asking you
to feel happy. I am on my knees begging you
to consider it
in your last but long flightless
moments on this darkening earth.
Bianca Stone is a poet and artist. Her books include The Mobius Strip
Club of Grief (Tin House, 2018), Someone Else's Wedding Vows (Octopus
Books and Tin House, 2014) and most recently What is Otherwise Infinite
(Tin House, 2022). Her poetry has appeared in The New Yorker, The
Atlantic and The Nation. She teaches classes on poetry and consciousness
in Vermont, where she is Creative Director at the Ruth Stone House.